from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Astronauts might hibernate on the way to Mars, but they'll eventually need to wake up and eat something. Astronaut food isn't just freeze-dried ice cream and tubes of mashed up mystery meat. Even though microgravity can adversely affect a person's sense of taste, that doesn't mean astronauts should be expected to live on endlessly dreary meals. Here are just a few links on space foods that astronauts might enjoy.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

For years, there has been concern over using antibiotics in our food supply, feeding animals "sub-therapeutic" medicines that make them grow bigger. The chicken industry seems to be shifting slowly towards removing certain antibiotics from its farms, but are consumers really aware of what the progress is (and isn't)?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of food additives that are just fine to eat, and many of them even have scary-sounding chemical names. This doesn't mean that all food additives are bad OR that all food additives are good. While it would be much simpler to make generalizations and label things either good or bad, it's not quite that simple, unless you want to only eat food with a very limited shelf life. Some preservatives reduce food waste and have undetectable effects on the nutritional benefits of the foods they preserve. On the other hand, there are some toxic substances that should be avoided, and they can be all-natural (eg. arsenic) or have some anthropogenic origin.

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The modern food supply isn't as efficient as it probably should be. People are over-fishing the oceans and relying too much on monoculture crops and artificial pesticides/fertilizers to keep up with the market demand for various kinds of food. But it's hard to convince a massive number of people to limit their intake of things like meat (and politically deadly as well). Technology will help boost food production for a while, and here are just a few links on some methods that farmers could adopt.

from the big-ag,-big-data dept

Monsanto is best-known for its controversial use of genetically-modified organisms, and less well-known for being involved in the story of the defoliant Agent Orange (the company's long and involved story is well told in the book and film "The World According to Monsanto", by Marie-Monique Robin.) Its shadow also looms large over the current TPP talks: the USTR's Chief Agricultural Negotiator is Islam A. Siddiqui, a former lobbyist for Monsanto. But it would seem that the company is starting to explore new fields, so to speak; as Salon reports in a fascinating and important post, Monsanto is going digital:

Monsanto spent close to $1 billion to buy the Climate Corporation, a data analytics firm. Last year the chemical and seed company also bought Precision Planting, another high-tech firm, and also launched a venture capital arm geared to fund tech start-ups.

Here's the key shift that is behind that move:

Many farmers have been collecting digitized yield data on their operations since the 1990s, when high-tech farm tools first emerged. But that information would sit on a tractor or monitor until the farmer manually transferred it to his computer, or handed a USB stick to an agronomist to analyze. Now, however, smart devices can wirelessly transfer data straight to a corporation’s servers, sometimes without a farmer's knowledge.

Data that in isolation is of limited use suddenly becomes highly valuable when aggregated. Here, for example, are some of the ways that companies like Monsanto might use their new stores of knowledge:

details on the economic worth of a farm operation could empower Monsanto or DuPont to calculate the exact value the farm derives from its products. Monsanto already varies its prices by region, so that Illinois farmers with a bumper crop might be charged more for seeds than Texas farmers facing a drought. Bigger heaps of data would enable these companies to price discriminate more finely, not just among different geographic regions but between neighbors.

Another possibility is the following:

Real-time data is highly valuable to investors and financial traders, who bet billions of dollars in wheat, soybean and corn futures. In a market where the slightest informational edge makes the difference between huge profits and even bigger losses, corporations that gather big data will have a ready customer base if they choose to sell their knowledge. Or they could just use it to speculate themselves.

Finally, there's this:

Another issue is how the value of this information will be determined, and the profits divided. The prescription services Monsanto and DuPont are offering will draw on the vast amounts of data they amass from thousands of individual farms. Farmers consider much of this information -- such as on soil fertility and crop yields -- confidential, and most view details about particular farming techniques as akin to personal "trade secrets." Even if the corporations agree not to disclose farm-specific information, some farmers worry that the information may end up being used against them in ways that dull their particular competitive edge.

The parallels with Facebook, Google and other online services that make money from collecting and analysing personal data, are clear. By pooling huge quantities of previously secret data, companies gain a privileged position with unique insights into what farmers are doing. As well as enabling them to track exactly what the latter are up to on a 24-by-7, field-by-field basis, it also allows these aggregators of agricultural data to see the bigger picture in terms of the relationships between different farms. In other words, the race seems to be on to become the NSA of agriculture, with Monsanto already emerging as the likely winner.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If fruits and vegetables tasted even better, maybe people would include more in their diet. Part of what researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to do is to improve the taste and nutritional profile of specialty crops like fruits and vegetables, in the hope that Americans will adopt a healthier diet. For generations, humans have been inadvertently breeding the nutrients out of fruits and vegetables, by selecting varieties that are more palatable (i.e., higher in sugar and starch). Then, somewhere along the way, appearance became important, and farmers began breeding aesthetically pleasing varieties, often at the expense of taste. So, now we're stuck with some pretty bland products. Here are some more tasty links.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Which of these are berries: bananas, watermelon, avocado, strawberries? Surprisingly, all of them, except strawberries. According to the botanical definition, a "berry" is a fleshy fruit that's produced from a single ovary. Strawberries are actually "accessory fruits" which consist of many small individual fruits embedded in a fleshy receptacle. The "seeds" that you see on the surface of strawberries are the actual fruits, and each of them surrounds a tiny seed. Here are some more strawberry-related links.

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Humans have been modifying the genes of plant and animal life for hundreds of years -- using conventional breeding techniques. Maybe you don't like the food you eat to have had its genetic material bombarded by radiation to accelerate mutations, or you don't want genes from pigs in your orange juice. But how else are farmers going to keep growing crops at ever increasing yields... or to grow superfoods that are more nutritious or make us smarter, immune to disease and better looking? Here are just a few examples of biotechnology getting into our food supply.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People usually don't think too much about how important bees are to the quality of human life. As pollinators, bees play an important role in the survival of crops that depend on them. The mass die-off of bees, also known as "Colony Collapse Disorder," can have detrimental effects on economies that depend heavily on pollinator-dependent crops. Scientists are just starting to figure out what might be causing these mass die-offs, while others are working on alternatives to using bees for pollination. Here are a few links related to the disappearing bee.